Integration of FirstSpirit CMS in IBM WebSphere Commerce for international online shops

Media Markt and Saturn, Europe's largest chains of electronic stores, are implementing their new e-commerce sites with the content management system (CMS) FirstSpirit from e-Spirit. They are integrating the FirstSpirit CMS in their multichannel platform based on IBM WebSphere Commerce and in this way are creating the technological basis for development of their online shops and for internationally uniform websites for both brands. www.saturn.de will be implemented as the first project and will go live in Germany in October. Not only the employees in the local stores but also in the management companies of all countries will use FirstSpirit as “editors” to create, maintain and deploy content for the e-commerce site.

As the central CMS, FirstSpirit will ensure the international consistency of all online sites of Media Markt and Saturn and at the same time will also cover the specific requirements of the two brands in the various countries. To this end, each brand will develop a uniform set of templates in the respective design of Media Markt and Saturn, which can be supplemented with other specific templates. The new e-commerce sites will be implemented by e-Spirit in cooperation with the IT service provider ARITHNEA, which is responsible for the project management and templating, and novomind for the conception and customizing of the IBM WebSphere Commerce platform.

CMS + shop link

The decisive factors leading to the choice of FirstSpirit was the unique ability to integrate the CMS into the specified shop environment and the framework of the IBM WebSphere Commerce server including support for the high security specifications. In future the editors will create the editorial content in the CMS, which supplements the pure shop information from the WebSphere Commerce system on the websites. With product teasers, comparison tables, link lists, recommendations, order information, etc. the editors can inform customers in an attractive and comprehensive way about products, campaigns and services. Before the content is delivered to the Commerce server, the pages can be checked in FirstSpirit's WYSIWYG preview. A special requirement is the need for time control of the content. The time-controlled preview contains an interactive time beam, on which a marker can be moved to any point in the future and therefore the state of the website at this future point in time can be displayed. This means, for example, employees can create the content for a seasonal offer campaign in advance, release it for deployment for a defined period and in the event of subsequent editorial changes can always use the CMS preview to check the effects on the current status of the website as well as its future view. The correct assignment of content, for example to a local store, is carried out via an extensive roles and permissions concept. This ensures that the employees in the stores can independently enter their individual content within the overall site.